The Fusion of Two Harlems

New York City was the most influential contributor to Jazz in the 1920s, as it created an environment where various peoples, cultures, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds could, “mix and react, creating the laboratory of a great race-welding” (Locke, 630). New York was the most heterogeneous northern city in the country, as “each group had come with it’s own separate motives and for it’s own special ends, but their greatest experience has been the finding of one another” (Locke, 630). The migration of African Americans from the south gave rise to a new Black identity, as music acted as an agent of change and expression for African Americans. This fusion of two different socioeconomic communities in New York is what set it apart from cities like Chicago. New York jazz music formed a racial identity and created an attitude of self-determination for African Americans.  (Locke).

These “Two Harlem’s” describe the African American cultural renaissance movement, and the lower class “rent party” social environment. Unlike Chicago, where black Jazz music was concentrated only in certain areas such as the south side, or New Orleans (storyville, red light district), Harlem created a sense of widespread community and social interaction, as seen in rent parties and social events, across all areas of the city. (Gioia, 93). It was, “neither a slum, ghetto, resort or colony, though it was in part all of them” (Locke, 630).   Where environments such as Chicago Jazz were concentrated only in black slums, Harlem created a forced syncretism of two diverse black communities, which evolved into a unique form of “New York Jazz.” The term “forced syncretism is important to note, as jazz music was highly ostracized in the upper brow black community, as it was associated with southern black slavery roots, racy dance clubs, and seen as a less educated and/or less sophisticated art form (as compared to European traditional art/literature). (Gioia, 123). In time, whites began to attend whites only “Cotton Club” located in Harlem, where they too began to fall under this “Jazz fever”, and therefore turned black jazz into a commercialized success.  (Gioia, 123).

New York style Jazz had the unique element of the stride piano, which “The Best of Jazz describes as an “oompah left hand, and by an arabesque of right-hand chords and arpeggios, fashioned in counter rhythms.” Stride piano was a metaphor for the innovative cultural melting pot of the two Harlem’s. It integrated both black audiences, and in that, created something totally unique and innovative.  As Gioia mentions, stride piano, “bridged the gulf between highbrow and lowbrow” (96). The Harlem Stride Style helped to bridge this gap between the poor blacks and the socially elite. The Stride Era consisted of many jazz fathers, such as Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Art Tail, and Willie “the lion” Smith, just to name a few. (Gioia).

In particular James P. Johnson, "the father of stride piano," best represents the New York Style Jazz as a whole. Johnson embodies Bakhtins “third party” dialogic theory of imagination to Jazz, more so than any other New York jazz father. While Johnson improvised the art of jazz through his stride playing, in doing so he also improvised the New York community, by responding to what his audiences wanted, therefore creating this new and unique “community of NY sound”. (Stewart lecture). He embodied the idea that a jazz piece was a dialogue between the artist and his audience, where the artists speaks to the audiences desires, while the audience in return is affected in the cultural changes these new sounds create. This element of call and response is seen in James’s pieces such as “Carolina Shout” and the Charleston (“The Best of Jazz”).

New York was not only innovative in the 1920’s but it went on to be a place of innovation of “big bands”, which consisted of both a bigger contrast between soloist and ensemble, as well as a faster paced, and more unison based rhythmic framework. New York became the basis of the new “swing era”, where men such as Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson who both in their own individual ways, became the pioneers of swing innovation, which would end up being extremely popular in the 1930’s. (“The Best of Jazz, Henderson). The opportunity for black Jazz musicians to inject their influence into NYC society, to cross cultural lines, and to make a living as a musician, certainly made this city the most important city for Jazz in the 1920's, and also carrying on to the 1930’s.